


The Small Specters

by HannaM



Category: Gashlycrumb Tinies - Edward Gorey
Genre: Gen, Undead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 04:16:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12335304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HannaM/pseuds/HannaM
Summary: The death of the first child is tragic. The death of the seventh begins to seem like carelessness.





	The Small Specters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lorelei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorelei/gifts).



The neighborhood, it was agreed, was taking a turn for the worse.  
  
This was sometime after the bears began to make regular appearances in Gashlycrumb Park and slightly before the regrettable incident of the falling awl that struck the Ormsby girl, but generally there was a feeling that things were not quite what they used to be.  
  
Although when it came down to it, no one could entirely remember how things used to be.  
  
Still, it seemed fairly certain that once young Titus Torrance flew into bits, insofar as that was any kind of usual fate to befall a child, the normal course of events would be for him to _stay_ in bits, even after the bits had been collected and carefully arranged in what seemed to be the right order.  
  
Yet little Zillah Zabinski swore she had seen him skipping down the lane, none the worse for wear apart from one ear mistakenly affixed to his elbow.  
  
Naturally, Zillah's older brother dismissed this claim, saying that the little girl had "got into the gin again" and asserting that it was simply another bid for their parents' attention.  
  
Perhaps the esteemed couple should have taken that as a warning, but alas, they remained as aloof as ever until the day they found their youngest passed out next to a bottle and her dollie, quite unable to wake again.  
  
Still, little Prue Pershingham, who was Zillah's dearest friend, declared one morning that she had seen Zillah trotting arm in ear-affixed arm with Titus, with another little boy following behind.  
  
And although most of the adults remained skeptical, it did occur to a few to check to make sure none of their little darlings had unfortunately perished in the night, which was how it was discovered that Neville Norville had indeed suffered that very fate.  
  
This was very strange, for unlike the nasty mauling little Basil Basingstoke had suffered or the unfortunate drowning of little Ida Ickler, it simply appeared that one hour Neville had been alive, and the next, not.  
  
"Chronic ennui," the doctor declared, upon inspecting the body. "Unusual in one so young, but perhaps if he'd gone outside more…"  
  
However, going outside proved to be the undoing of little Prue, who wandered into the pub just in time to be trampled flat in a brawl. The men in question expressed their profound regrets, but one or two were heard to mutter that they 'hadn't even seen the chit till she was cold.'  
  
And then, of course, there was the tragic Monday afternoon at the Ormsby's house, when in the course of one game of hide-and-seek, little Amy Adler had a fatal fall down the staircase, little George Gosling was suspiciously smothered underneath a rug and Olive Ormsby was most ostentatiously run through with an awl.  
  
The Ormsbys were devastated, of course. The rug was Persian, and they did so hate to have to hand it over to the police as evidence.  
  
And what of little Olive? One moment so tremendously alive, playing a game of hide-and-seek with her friends after having told them about the dream she'd had of a lovely tea party with all their friends, presided over by an imposing figure with a skull for a face, the next, well...

"It's so much _better_ now," she remembered Prue saying. "No parents to tell us not to do things, and nothing hurts us anymore. We can play and play and play forever..."


End file.
